The Strength of Strong Ties Reconsidered: Social Ties and Collective Power in a Gentrifying Community

Introduction

Gentrification, now ubiquitous in cities across the globe (Smith 2002), has gradually emerged as a mitigating force against population loss, tax base erosion, neighborhood deterioration, and as part of continuing attempts to use business and residential growth to solve urban problems (Hackworth and Smith 2001). The movement of middle-class residents to urban neighborhoods combined with the revalorization of city space (Smith 1979) appears to be a buffer against the seeming continuous growth of suburban areas. The dramatic increase in central city housing prices and accompanying spatial revalorization has made gentrification central to a neoliberal urban agenda. Gentrification is the poster child for how the private sector, particularly when assisted by policies that remove public housing and barriers to housing development and renovations, can save cities (Goetz 2011, 2013; Weber 2002).

Gentrification, however, is not unimpeded. Gentrification creates conflict, especially at the neighborhood level (Butler 2003; Kasinitz 1988; Mazer and Rankin 2011; Spain 1993). Gentrifying communities are embroiled in struggles over increasing housing costs, neighborhood character, consumption, community needs, and displacement (Anderson 1990; Atkinson 2000; Brown-Saracino 2009; Deener 2012; Freeman 2006; Hamnett 2003; Hankins 2007; Keels, Burdick-Will, and Keene 2013; Lees 2008; Marcuse 1986; Mele 2000; Shaw and Sullivan 2011; Smith 1996; Vigdor 2001; Zukin et al. 2009). Conflicts between newer and long-established residents have increased with the growing scale and significance of gentrification (Atkinson 2004; Slater 2006; Smith 2002; Wyly and Hammel 1999).

Through gentrification, the direction of community change is at least temporarily decided where the economic power of newer residents wins out over the needs and wants of poorer long-time residents (Beauregard 1986; Hackworth and Smith 2001; Kasinitz 1988). The rights of long-time residents to have a say over community decisions diminishes as newer residents use their market power to take over communities and remake them to suit consumer demands (Smith 1986; Zukin 1987). Newer residents appropriate the urban communities already undermined by deindustrialization.

Yet, community-based conflicts resulting from gentrification have become more visible than in the past when gentrification was a minor urban phenomenon (Berry 1985). These clashes over community control suggest the seeming inevitability of market power over local longevity. Yet, this overlooks potential strategies that long-time residents can use to maintain a presence in their neighborhoods and to have a say over community issues. How do long-time residents reaffirm their place within gentrifying communities?

This article is based on a case study focusing on a group of long-time residents of a gentrifying Philadelphia neighborhood—Fishtown—who reaffirmed their place in their community. Fishtown is one of the small number of Philadelphia neighborhoods that has been empirically verified as gentrified (Pew Charitable Trusts 2016). Although established as the quintessential exemplar of gentrification, a significant number of long-time working-class residents remained in the neighborhood. This clash of older versus newer residents represented a central division within the neighborhood. About 40 percent had moved in prior to 1979, 34 percent had moved in between 1980 and 1989, and 24 percent had moved in after 1995. While close to one quarter of Fishtown’s households could be characterized as newcomers, the vast majority could be considered long-time residents (U.S. Census 2010). ¹

A state proposal to build a casino in Fishtown divided the community between newer residents who opposed the casino and long-time residents who supported the casino. Initially, the interests of anti-casino newer residents dominated in the community as newer Fishtown residents appropriated the local neighborhood association and turned it into a venue for anti-casino rhetoric and activism. But long-time residents used their strong ties and strongly held beliefs that large-scale capitalist institutions benefit communities as a resource for organizing their friends and neighbors in support for the casino, to counter the anti-casino activism of newcomers, and to negotiate with the casino for community benefits. Long-time Fishtown residents, who shared a history of the pre-deindustrialization power of capitalist enterprises as a foundation for community, residential proximity, place-based experiences, and perceptions on the needs of the community, organized against the interests of newer residents to reaffirm a place in their community.

Attention to gentrification struggles have largely focused on the market power of newer residents and the assumed inevitability of long-time residents losing their communities (Atkinson 2000; Hamnett 2003; Newman and Wyly 2006; Slater 2006, 2009). This article argues that in the case of gentrification, market power over land and housing is not destiny. It shows that the strong ties that bind together long-time residents can be a source of power that can be used to reaffirm a place in communities undergoing rapid economic and cultural changes.

A long-standing issue for sociology is the connection between community social ties and collective action. Concern over the perceived breakdown of social ties resulting from the shift from close-knit rural communities to cities that epitomized turn-of-the-century urban patterns was central to the genesis of the Chicago School of urban sociology. Understanding how the spatial organization of cities created and sustained urban social order previously maintained by rural institutions was at the heart of pioneering urban sociology (Park, Burgess, and McKenzie 1984). The challenge faced by early urban sociologists was assessing how social ties and community sentiment mitigated against the economic forces associated with urban land markets—representing classic questions over whether and how social organization can trump economic determinism. This research continues in this tradition. It assesses how neighborhood social ties can be used in conjunction with community organizing as political leverage (Alinsky 1989; Warren 2001).

The experiences of long-time residents actively addressing gentrification have received less attention in the scholarly literature than the experiences of gentrifiers (Slater 2006). Most empirical research has pursued more of a top-down approach to gentrification by focusing on the actions, power, and experiences of gentrifiers while devoting less empirical attention to bottom-up approaches prioritizing the experiences of long-time residents (Watt 2008). The emphasis on the powerful instead of the seeming powerless is partly the result of the methodological difficulties involved with studying people already displaced by gentrification as well as problems with empirically investigating nonevents or the absence of conflict that accompanies the most serious situations of powerlessness (Gaventa 1982; Newman and Wyly 2006).

But the absence of attention to less-powerful long-term residents represents in part the belief that gentrification, like globalization and deindustrialization, represents a logic of capitalism. Structural forces that support gentrification cannot be altered through class struggle where structure trumps the agency that is key to political organizing (DeFilippis, 2001; DeFilippis, Fisher, and Shragge 2010). In the case of Fishtown, however, long-time residents were not out to thwart gentrification so much as to seize the opportunity to grab a piece of the pie. Long-time Fishtown residents worked in the interest of capitalism because they believed it was in their interest to do so (Fasenfest 1986). In this sense, Fishtown was the site of two counter-hegemonic forces, one supporting casinos and the other supporting gentrification. In the long run, newcomers’ alliance with gentrification proved to be an inevitable outcome.

This research shifts the focus from newcomer success in urban transformation to the role of class and social organization in setting up roadblocks, however temporary and precarious, to gentrification. It focuses on the perceptions, interests, actions, and potential power of long-time residents as they deal with an influx of newer residents and changes brought about by gentrification. As will be seen, two kinds of cleavages emerged. Long-time residents perceived the casino as a positive form of community investment and another form of industrialization bringing jobs. Newer residents perceived casinos as negative externalities that would alter the neighborhood’s character and attract undesirable activities and people.

Community Power and the Strength of Strong Ties Reconsidered

Mark Granovetter’s (1973) now classic “strength of weak ties” thesis continues to inform our understanding of the role of interpersonal networks in shaping community power over neighborhood change. According to Granovetter, strong interpersonal ties between like-minded and similarly place-based residents are less valuable and useful for communities than weak ties across a diverse field of people and organizations. For Granovetter, the strength of a tie is based on the cumulative experiences of time spent together, emotional intensity and intimacy of interactions, and a sense of reciprocity. People with strong ties often share a similar status and when clustered together in isolated communities tend to exchange redundant resources and information (Feld 1982; McPherson and Smith-Lovin 1987; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook 2001). They tend to be less successful at exerting power at the community level because they have fewer resources to use and fewer coalitions to call upon. Bridging networks based on weak interpersonal ties, however, are more useful for residents to exert community power because weak ties connect different people and organizations to a diversity of information, skills, and resources that can be tapped to address community needs. Weak ties enable communities to broaden networks and build powerful coalitions that can be called upon to address community interests.

Granovetter (1973, 1983) used Gans’s (1962) West End community to exemplify the relationship between strong community ties, vulnerability, and powerlessness. He suggested that the West End was reluctant to unite and organize against the urban renewal that ultimately displaced residents and destroyed the community because residents depended on strong interpersonal ties that prevented them from building coalitions with people and organizations outside the neighborhood. West Enders tended to regard plans for urban renewal as a community issue, favoring rigid parochialism to coalition building with potential allies. Their internal focus inhibited coalition building and a diversity of alliances that could have been mobilized to resist the power and influence of the city and developers. Gans’s story of Boston’s Urban Villagers was about how the strong ties that early urban sociologists thought were the roots of cohesive community ultimately prevented people from effective community organizing. Strong ties can be conceived as a deficit for communities, leading to isolation and powerlessness (Portes 1998; Smallacombe 2006).

More recently, Richard Florida (2002, 2003) argued that weak ties are an essential ingredient to contemporary urban economic development policy. Strong ties, he argued, act as barriers to local entry for talented, highly educated people—the creative class—who are the source of the economic and cultural power necessary for urban rejuvenation. Communities bound by tight-knit interpersonal ties are atavistic and out of touch. Communities that are on the move economically and socially are fast paced, with people and capital investment moving in and out. Communities of residents with strong ties are social-spatial losers while those of residents with weak ties are the agents of community change and power.

When applied to gentrification, the strength-of-weak-ties thesis suggests that long-time residents who maintain strong ties based on common place-based experiences will have less power to achieve collective goals and promote their interests. Alternatively, newer residents who do not share a generational connection to a community will not be burdened with many strong ties within that community. Instead, newer residents will bring a diversity of network resources based on weak ties that will attract other like-minded, less place-bound people and provide them with valuable resources to initiate and proceed with economically rewarding business activity and real estate development. According to the theory, newer residents with many weak ties should win out over long-time residents with strong community ties. Long-time residents will not be able to draw much power from their interpersonal networks to resist the changes brought by newcomers who are more fully diversified in social network resources.

Nonetheless, Robert Putnam suggested an alternative view regarding the usefulness of strong ties as a source for community power. For Putnam (2000), both weak and strong interpersonal ties are sources for developing social capital. Social capital is derived from social ties and networks of association that are maintained by a sense of trust, reciprocity, and shared norms and is linked to the acquisition of valuable resources, information, and support (Aguilera 2002; Coleman 1988; Knack and Keefer 1997; Lin 1999; Paxton 2002; Portes 1998; Putnam 2000; Small 2004; Wellman and Wortley 1990). While Putnam agreed that weak ties enable residents to diversify their social capital, he argued that strong social ties based on mutual trust and reciprocity provide the crucial adhesive that binds communities and provides the power for shared efficacy. For him, strong ties are the foundation for building community power. Weak ties may provide value for communities, but the usefulness of weak ties is accentuated when strong ties have bound people together around a shared sense of purpose, identity, and needs, and a common sense of community. Indeed, strong ties are what Putnam meant by the concept of community.

Yet differences in the utility of weak versus strong ties for urban economic and community development may have a class basis. Pervasive weak ties may be more useful and productive when there are more resources to distribute. For middle- and upper-class people who have lots of resources at their disposal, weak ties may provide a more valuable avenue for exchanging these resources. Weak ties may spread the wealth when there is more wealth to distribute. For poorer communities, weak ties may be less useful when there is nothing to deliver in the first place. In the absence of weak ties, disposable ties—ties established between strangers to exchange resources for short periods of time—are crucial for survival for the urban poor (Desmond 2012). Poor and working-class communities who lack in resources may also rely more on strong ties built around shared identity and community support. For lower-income communities, strong ties may be a necessary and important substitute for the economic resources so casually traded and passed on by more affluent communities.

The role of social ties in shaping community outcomes has not been prominent in gentrification research. Research on gentrification-related conflicts has focused on activists’ organizational networks, resident alliances, and representations of resistance by anti-gentrification residents (Mele 2000; Smith 1996; Woldoff, Morrison, and Glass 2016). But research that looks at anti-gentrification activities has largely ignored community-based social ties, assuming that gentrification-related displacement simply destroys these bonds among former neighborhood residents (Newman and Wyly 2006).

Strong ties between long-time residents, however, can be a resource to establish a foothold against gentrification forces. Long-time residents who share strong interpersonal bonds and shared place-based identities and experiences can be united by, and organize around shared perspectives on community needs (Martin 2003). Strong community connections based on trust, reciprocity, and loyalty to people and place can be the source for building social capital that can be used to challenge the wants and interests of gentrifiers and ultimately reaffirm the right to the city for long-time residents.

Data and Method

This research is a case study examining a conflict that occurred between December 2006 and September 2010 in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia over plans to build a casino in the community. The primary data for this research come from 29 semistructured interviews with numerous respondents involved in, or knowledgeable about, casino development in Philadelphia. ² Respondents were selected by targeted and snowball sampling, and each interview typically lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. Other data include a media content-analysis of articles published in The Philadelphia Inquirer between 2004 and 2012 covering casino development in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania and numerous on-site observations of town hall meetings and anticasino protests held by Casino Free Philadelphia, as well as visits to the SugarHouse Casino. ³ Data collection took place between July 2009 and July 2012. ⁴

Casino Development in Philadelphia

In 2004, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed Act 71, which legalized gambling in Pennsylvania as a means of extracting new tax revenue and mandated the development of 14 casinos across the state, two of which were slated for Philadelphia. In 2006, after months of clandestine debate and negotiation between the state and casino interests, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) awarded two licenses to casino companies to build and operate casinos in Philadelphia (Calvano and Andersson 2010; Teague 2007). The Foxwoods Casino was scheduled to be built in South Philadelphia adjacent to the Society Hill, Queen Village, and Pennsport neighborhoods and the other license was awarded to the SugarHouse Casino to build and operate a casino in Fishtown. Residents of the South Philadelphia communities surrounding the Foxwoods location were opposed to the casino while residents of Fishtown were split between newer residents who opposed and long-time residents who supported the SugarHouse Casino.

Weak Ties versus Strong Ties in Fishtown

According to Granovetter (1973), people develop strong ties with friends and neighbors over extended periods of time, with whom they foster a sense of mutual reciprocity. People bound by strong ties rely on and trust one another; they depend on the intimacy of relationships strengthened over time. In addition, Putnam (2000) found that people who are bound by strong network ties are more likely to be involved in community-based organizations that are also locations where new bonds are created and existing bonds are reinforced.

Newer residents did not have long-term or generational connections with Fishtown’s working-class roots and tended to have weaker ties within the community. They did not have the long-term connections with the community and the local institutions like the churches, the Fishtown Athletic Center, and the neighborhood association. As part of Fishtown’s gentrification, newer residents recognized that they had less connection with the community than long-time residents, as the following newer resident explained,

Fishtown has a significant population who has been there a very long time; they are very proud of Fishtown, just very proud of its long history of generation after generation of people living there. I was the early wave of gentrification and you know most of us [newer residents] lived somewhere else and were young and looking to buy with limited finances but wanted to be near center city. And frankly, Fishtown is a safe working class neighborhood. (Interview: April 8, 2011)

For Casino Free Philadelphia, the dependence on weak ties was by design. This respondent, a newer Fishtown resident and Casino Free Philadelphia activist, explained that part of Casino Free Philadelphia’s strategy was to build a coalition of anticasino residents from many different neighborhoods across Philadelphia,

So we organized neighbors, went to hearings, got a little press . . . started reaching out very quickly to other neighborhoods . . . and we decided to launch Casino Free Philadelphia with the explicit purpose of, let’s get everyone, let’s get leaders in every one of these neighborhoods that are potentially impacted, to be on the same page. (Interview: February 25, 2011)

Experienced at grassroots activism, Casino Free Philadelphia, along with newer Fishtown residents, also organized nonviolent direct actions at a casino in Chester, Pennsylvania, some 20 miles south of Philadelphia, in Harrisburg, the state capital, as well as in the Fishtown community. A newer Fishtown resident and Casino Free Philadelphia member explained, “So direct action is a strong value for us. Basically, [we] have a tool box of strategies engaging in some kind of civil disobedience or breaking a law to expose a larger injustice” (Interview: February 5, 2011).

For newer residents and anticasino activists, establishing ties and building coalitions with like-minded individuals from many different parts of the city and the state were part of the strategy for opposing casino development. For them, the casino issue was more than just a local Fishtown issue; it was a citywide and statewide issue.

Long-time residents were far more connected to one another by strong community ties and known for being folks who keep to their own and stick together. Binzen (1970) documented the parochial and insular character of white working-class residents of the larger Kensington area of which Fishtown is a part. He observed a community that tapped into its strong community ties to weather political and economic upheavals. Rossi (1980) found that residents were intensely place-bound and connected to their community, reluctant to abandon their neighborhood despite the changing economic horizon. Smallacombe (2006) more recently found that the residents of the Kensington area including Fishtown were highly dependent on the resources exchanged and the stability provided by social ties, formed through interactions with family, friends, and neighbors.

Long-time Fishtown residents had long-term relationships with their friends and neighbors, were connected to local community institutions, and shared experiences of both living in, and being from Fishtown. When asked how they started to come together and organize in support of the casino, the following long-time resident explained,

I met —— one day when I took my son to kindergarten, and they only lived a block over, I saw them walking to school and offered them a ride. They hopped in, and now we’re best friends. I have a group of Fishtown friends, we started “Celebrate Fishtown” then the leader who was the editor of the [Fishtown] Star (when it was at 3rd and Girard), she was the chair, and got cancer and passed. We tried to keep it going. Since that time, people had my address and telephone number. It all started as friends. (Interview: March 24, 2011)

This anecdote demonstrates how long-time residents were bound by proximity, time, and reoccurring interactions. Trust was built over time, and relationships flourished. People got involved in community-based activities and institutions, which further strengthen their place-based connections to the community.

Long-time residents used their strong community ties to organize and mobilize other long-time residents in support of the casino and in opposition to newer residents and anti-casino activists. Their strategy for mobilizing support for the casino focused on the Fishtown community exclusively. They did not pursue coalition building with people from other communities as they believed the fate of the SugarHouse Casino was not a city issue. For them, the casino was a Fishtown issue. People from outside of the community along with newer residents had no right to make claims about what was best for their community.

Fishtown Action: A Response to Newer Residents

Prior to the decision to locate SugarHouse in Fishtown, there was unease in the community over the possibility of a casino operating adjacent to people’s homes, schools, and churches. Many residents attended meetings held by the Fishtown Neighbors Association (FNA) to discuss the casino issue. The FNA is a neighborhood civic association consisting of resident volunteers, which addresses numerous community issues, including zoning, public safety, and education. When SugarHouse was awarded the casino license in 2006, attendance at FNA meetings spiked. Newer residents to the community were especially active at these meetings after the decision was made to locate SugarHouse in the community. As a result of the attendance by newer residents, the overall tone at the FNA became anti-casino.

Many long-time residents who supported casino development and wanted to discuss the possibility of negotiating with SugarHouse for community benefits found their voices drowned out by a wave of newer residents who used the FNA as a venue to vocalize their antipathy toward casino development and to organize opposition. Long-time residents, some of whom founded the FNA, felt excluded from the very group they had supported for many years, as the following respondent explained:

FNA was made up of a lot old guard Fishtown neighbors, and then when this started to rear its head a lot of the new younger people moving in that were anti-casino started to take it over. (Interview: April 29, 2011)

When long-time residents attempted to discuss the benefits that could be procured from the casino for the community or when they attempted to represent long-time resident’s interests, they felt overwhelmed with what they perceived to be condescending, judgmental, and sometimes hostile responses from newer residents, as this long-time resident explained,

You have a split situation in Fishtown, new people moving in who have different views. We’ve been here, we are not closed to new ideas, but we are certainly not open to be trampled on or taken advantage of or bulldozed. That’s what a lot of [long-time] Fishtowners felt like when these people who just got here said, “No we don’t want it!” I think they were hostile and aggressive, not assertive. Aggressive and they were bullyish. (Interview: March 29, 2011)

As the following respondent explained, long-time residents believed newer residents looked down on them as ignorant, uninformed, and misguided in their support for SugarHouse and, therefore, did not deserve to have their interests or points of view considered at FNA meetings,

You know, these people [newer residents] think we’re a bunch of idiots, so there was a divide. A lot of people moving into the neighborhood are young professionals; they think that we are all a race full of dropouts. So there was a definite elitist feeling. (Interview: March 1, 2011)

Long-time residents no longer felt welcome at FNA meetings because newer residents had effectively taken over the community organization, which was frustrating, as this long-time resident explained, “Our grudge was, let us have our opinion. I want to speak, I have every right. They felt like they were newcomers and they felt that they had more of a say, but we should have a say!” (Interview: March 24, 2011).

The usurpation by newer residents of the community forum led numerous long-time residents to abandon the FNA and form an alternative community organization open to negotiation and cooperation with SugarHouse. One respondent explained how the FNA became a hostile place for long-time residents who were pro-casino and which led them to form their own organization called Fishtown Action:

When Fishtown Action was created it was a direct result of not being able to entertain conversations in the community atmosphere. We just said, that’s it we aren’t going to attend these meetings when we aren’t able to talk about the casino, not to have our voice here . . . Fishtown Action arose out of FNA not being able to discuss the casino. (Interview: March 29, 2011)

Long-time residents reacted to their perceived ousting from the FNA by forming their own organization; one that was pro-casino, open to negotiation with SugarHouse, and poised to promote pro-casino sentiment and organize long-time residents in the community.

Strong Ties and the Building of Pro-casino Support in Fishtown

Fishtown Action members engaged in informal conversations with their friends and neighbors, canvassed on behalf of the casino at community events, organized picnics and block parties in support of the casino. The following long-time residents explained how early organizing in support of the casino involved informal conversations with friends and neighbors:

We started to talk to other people and started finding out that other people in the neighborhood were for it. “Yeah I’m for it too, I’m for it too, but I don’t want go to the FNA because every meeting ends in a screaming match.” (Interview: March 1, 2011)

So yeah, I’d been an advocate for it and talked to people, tried to do my part in promoting it. (Interview: March 7, 2011)

Long-time residents believed it was necessary to actively show their support in the face of the already mobilized newer residents and anti-casino activists who were attempting to thwart the development of the casino. The narrative promoted by anti-casino activists from Casino Free Philadelphia, newer Fishtown residents, and the Philadelphia media during the early stages of the conflict was that the casino would be bad for the community, and Fishtown was against the project. Casino Free Philadelphia had been working in partnership with newer residents organizing town hall meetings, protests at the state capital, and holding anti-casino actions to generate anti-casino sentiment and activism in Fishtown, as well as other communities across Philadelphia. Long-time residents believed that to have their pro-casino interests represented in the community, they had to organize in opposition to newer residents and anti-casino activists who had already established a foothold for their anti-casino agenda in the community. The following respondent, a long-time Fishtown resident and casino supporter, explained,

What happened when the anti-casino organization really got mobilized and they tended to be kind of younger, more tech-wise, so they could get people organized quicker with Facebook or e-mail, the Fishtown Action people were more your traditional Fishtown people who were probably clearly a little less tech savvy and things like that. So in response to the well-developed organizational structure of the anti-casino people, —— got together and formed this organization, broke away from the FNA . . . So they created an organization [Fishtown Action] and they invited the community. (Interview: March 3, 2011)

An early example of long-time residents organizing their social ties in support of the casino was when Fishtown Action organized hundreds of families to display red ribbons on their homes and in the streets. This Fishtown Action member explained how they organized this display of support for the casino,

We put ads in the [local] papers from the Star to the Spirit . . . at community events, the school; I’d take fliers to the school or the church on the corner. After school, parents would ask about it. It was our networking. Word of mouth travels fast when it comes to issues like this. Not as fast as a text, but through this networking. (Interview: March 24, 2011)

The ribbons were meant to symbolize the vast community support among long-time residents, and it was one of the earliest ways long-time residents organized in support of the casino.

For long-time residents, organizing support for the casino was crucial for procuring benefits for the community. It was their belief that unless they mobilized as a community and challenged newer residents, Fishtown would either lose the opportunity for the casino to be built, or it would be built without any provisions for community benefits.

By supporting the development of the casino, long-time residents were politically aligned with the interests of powerful state and business actors who were behind this particular casino and were promoting the casino concept more generally (Calvano and Andersson 2010). For state actors, casinos were a form of fiscal policy; the state wanted casinos because they created an easy source of revenue for the government. The businesses behind the casinos promoted them for the obvious reason that they generated profits that were often huge; they were in the casino business precisely because the costs and benefits of casinos were always in favor of the casino owners.

Long-time residents, however, were not interested in state fiscal policy or casino profitability. The alignment of their interests with the powerful institutions emerged out of a context of the degradation they had experienced with disinvestment and deindustrialization. For long-time Fishtown residents, the casino was an opportunity to get a piece of the action, something they had not had for decades.

Fishtown Action challenged the anti-casino narrative coming from newer residents and anti-casino activists, suggesting instead that it was the newer residents who were out of touch with the real needs and interests of the community. A public relations representative for one of the Philadelphia area’s local casinos explained how important the pro-casino support by long-time residents was for changing the narrative around casino construction in Fishtown,

A lot of credit goes to [Fishtown] neighbors because they worked very hard to get both the political establishment and the media to see that there is another side to this story. The media only talked about . . . the anti’s. So the neighbors picketed [State Representative] Mike O’Brien’s office, wrote letters to the Governor. They made a deal about how they lived here, hundreds who supported the casino. It helped to put the political establishment on notice, and at the end of the day, the politicians recognized that and I think that was very helpful. (Interview: March 9, 2011)

Long-time residents not only challenged the legitimacy of newer resident’s and anti-casino activist’s claims about the harms of the casino but made themselves visible to both the local political establishment, as well as the media. This activity by long-time residents greatly aided in legitimizing SugarHouse in both Philadelphia and Fishtown.

But challenging the anti-casino narrative maintained by newer residents was only part of the strategy employed by long-time residents. Fishtown Action tapped their strong social ties in the community to generate support for the casino by holding coffee klatches in people’s homes. At the coffee klatches, representatives from SugarHouse were brought together with residents to discuss issues and concerns residents had about the casino, as well as the benefits and logistical steps for building and operating the casino. Initially, Fishtown Action members hosted the coffee klatches but as more of their friends and neighbors attended these gatherings, the attendees began to hold coffee klatches of their own. This Fishtown Action member explained the rapid success of the coffee klatches and the attention they attracted,

So we first had little meetings in people’s homes. People said, “Yeah, bring them to my house, my neighbors want to hear.” SugarHouse reps would come out to people’s homes, literally to living rooms and explain their project. They brought their architectural renderings; they explained what they wanted to do. The progression of it would be, so forth and so on, and that’s how people got the answers that people were looking for. Literally in people’s living rooms, it was getting so big, people couldn’t have it in their living rooms, and we were having three meetings a week, it was getting overwhelming. (Interview: March 1, 2011)

Respondents described a sort of “chain reaction” within their networks, where more and more people became involved in the pro-casino cause by hosting coffee klatches of their own. The coffee klatches were a way for long-time residents who had little familiarity with political activism to organize a more formal and organized coalition of support for casino development.

The coffee klatches also gave SugarHouse an opportunity to sell their message about the benefits they believed their casino could bring to the community. The more formal boundaries that might separate representatives of a large corporation and members of a community were transcended at these coffee klatches, much to the advantage of casino supporters and, of course, to SugarHouse. The casino was not just some abstract corporate entity that one might read about in the newspaper, but was a person who answered questions, addressed concerns, and promised benefits.

SugarHouse did not patronize the process of community outreach by sending low-level public relations personnel. Instead, major figures including SugarHouse CEO Greg Carlin were involved in community outreach. It was widely agreed that SugarHouse was more successful at community outreach than Foxwoods had been, as this head of a Philadelphia urban planning and research firm explained, “Sugarhouse was more willing to kind of work with us as we were developing the civic vision with the [Fishtown] community. There was much more interest in the Sugarhouse people of being part of the process” (Interview: June 2, 2011). This helped legitimize the casino in the eyes of many long-time residents and energized them around the pro-casino cause. It was a sign for Fishtown Action members that the casino respected resident’s interests and appreciated the needs of the community for jobs and money.

Newer residents were aware of their disadvantage when comparing their organizing potential with the social connections of long-time Fishtown residents. Newer residents and anti-casino activists readily cited the strong ties between long-time Fishtown residents as crucial for generating more support for the casino in the community. As suggested by this newer resident, the personal relationships and networks of associations between long-time Fishtown residents were used by SugarHouse to more effectively sell their message and image of the casino as a partner with the community,

I think the pro-[casino] folks have a much tighter sort of personal connection . . . The people that I would run into that were pro-casino were typically older, they . . . were tied into that Fishtown old boys club. SugarHouse really tapped into the Fishtown old boys club . . . [SugarHouse] drummed up a lot of support by reaching out through a community of people who talk to each other. They held meetings in their living rooms and said, “Hey you should support this because there are going to be jobs.” (Interview: April 8, 2011)

From the perspective of anti-casino activists and newer residents, the casino exploited community divisions to benefit from long-time resident support. Their sense that the casino capitalized on community divisions was reinforced by the sharply different political activity in other communities where casinos were planned. In South Philadelphia (and briefly in Chinatown), where the Foxwoods Casino was proposed, residents united around their antipathy for the casino proposal and were active in efforts to stop the project. These communities were not divided like Fishtown. Instead, the Foxwoods Casino was met by hostile residents unified in their dissatisfaction with the casino plans. Casino opponents in Fishtown lamented their inability to organize similar efforts and were frustrated by long-time residents who insisted on supporting the casino.

The Community Benefits Agreement: A Jackpot for Fishtown Action

What began as a group of long-time residents disenchanted by the anti-casino activism and vitriol of newer residents at FNA meetings grew into an organization with broad-based support among long-time residents of the community. Initially, the strong ties of long-time residents were mobilized to challenge newer resident and anti-casino activist’s claims about the harms of casino development and to galvanize support among long-time Fishtown residents for SugarHouse. Later, the social capital created by Fishtown Action became important when negotiations with the casino took place. SugarHouse seized the opportunity to come into people’s homes and sell their vision for shared prosperity in the community. But the social ties that had been accessed by SugarHouse to generate community support could also be directed back at the casino if the promised concessions were not made. For SugarHouse to maintain legitimate ties with long-time residents, they would have to make good on their promises or potentially feel the repercussions from residents who had been integral in generating community support.

For 14 months, Fishtown Action members negotiated the terms of a Community Benefits Agreement with SugarHouse. Community benefits agreements are deals between residents and developers, who wishing to avoid backlash from residents make concessions, such as providing employment, affordable housing, and money for community improvement projects (Salkin and Lavine 2008; Wolf-Powers 2010). Community benefits agreements give residents the opportunity to be involved in decisions, as well as guarantee benefits, from development (Baxamusa 2008; Saito 2012; Salkin and Lavine 2008). Based on Fishtown Action’s discussions and meeting with friends and neighbors, the central provisions fought for during these negotiations were employment opportunities along with vocational training for Fishtown residents and money that would be used for community improvement projects.

As mandated by the Community Benefits Agreement, SugarHouse promised to prioritize the hiring of local residents for construction jobs and other permanent positions at the casino, provide training programs for residents to work at the casino, and college internship programs to students of the community. Along with employment opportunities, SugarHouse agreed to pay an annual sum of $1 million to the Penn Treaty Special Services District, which was created as part of the Community Benefits Agreement to manage the contribution. This money was specifically allotted for community improvement projects.

For long-time residents of Fishtown, the Community Benefits Agreement represented a major victory. When asked whether the Community Benefits Agreement would have been signed or any benefits given to the community without the work of Fishtown Action, this long-time Fishtown resident replied, “No, Fishtown Action was absolutely crucial” (Interview: March 29, 2011). This respondent argued that there would have been no incentive for SugarHouse to give Fishtown anything if not for the efforts of Fishtown Action and other long-time residents organizing community support for the casino. This was confirmed by another long-time Fishtown resident:

I am very happy because guess what, if we had not done that we would have nothing . . . If nobody had gone and met with them, there would be no Community Benefits Agreement . . . We would not have the commitment to hire from the community. We would not have had the internship programs. We wouldn’t have the money. (Interview: March 1, 2011)

Long-time residents believed that without their canvassing on behalf of the casino and support from long-time residents, SugarHouse would not have provided any of the benefits that were eventually procured. If, for instance, the community had rallied against the casino plan (as newer residents and anti-casino activists had hoped), then the casino would have no incentive to hire people from the community, provide internships to Fishtown students, or provide the annual host fee for the community. Instead, they believed that the jobs and money were something the community had to fight for and demand from the casino.

Who Won, Why, and What Did They Win?

Long-time residents believed they were the big winners in the conflict over casino development in Fishtown. They successfully used their strong community ties to organize and mobilize other long-time residents to support the casino in the face of newer residents’ interests and ultimately used their community power to negotiate with SugarHouse for the Community Benefits Agreement. Although community benefits agreements are becoming more common, they are far from ubiquitous (Wolf-Powers 2010). In the case of Fishtown, a group of long-time residents in a gentrifying community were able to defy the interests of newer residents and meet at the table with a state-mandated neoliberal project to get a piece of the action for their community. They got what they wanted; jobs, money, and the power to make demands on behalf of their community in spite of gentrifiers’ interests.

The other winner was the SugarHouse Casino, which opened in 2010 and has since expanded. SugarHouse’s success is due to both the willingness of long-time residents to consider the potential benefits of a casino and also their outreach to long-time Fishtown residents. There was no organized or active community support for the construction of the Foxwoods Casino in either South Philadelphia or Chinatown, and there was no reported community outreach by the Foxwoods Casino, as the following respondent, a member of city design and planning organization, explained,

Sugarhouse was more successful and I think more sophisticated at picking off certain community groups . . . there was a more kind of amicable relationship overall between the owners and operators of SugarHouse and the community. We didn’t come up against any large-scale kind of division within the South Philly community. (Interview: June 2, 2011)

There was no South Philadelphia or Chinatown version of Fishtown Action to challenge the anti-casino narratives or work with the casino to design a Community Benefits Agreement. Instead, the Foxwoods Casino was widely panned by community members.

Numerous scholars have documented the limitations of community activism and social capital for challenging state and capitalist interests (Fasenfest 1986; Fraser et al. 2003; Mayer 2003). The structure of power and the prevailing logic of capitalism operate beyond the community level and shape community-based conflicts between residents. However, the success of big development projects such as casinos may not be a foregone conclusion, nor are residents always powerless when dealing with capitalist institutions. Similarly, the assumed economic power of gentrifying newer residents may not be decisive when long-time residents can tap into the potential power of community-based networks. The case of Fishtown shows that long-time residents have power to at least temporarily resist the often assumed inevitable outcomes of gentrification.

Conclusion

This research shows that in gentrifying neighborhoods, working-class interests can prevail over middle-class interests in community struggles. Too often, it is assumed that the economic power of newer residents will prevail when disputes over community needs arise. This research illustrates the ways in which long-time residents of gentrifying communities can use their strong community ties as an asset to acquire and maintain a seat at the table when major community decisions are being debated.

For Granovetter, the strong ties that exemplified Boston’s West End created a cloistered and parochial community that was ultimately unable to organize against urban renewal and displacement. This research shows that in gentrifying neighborhoods, strong ties may be more useful to long-time working-class residents than weak ties for rallying residents around shared interests and perspectives of community needs and values. In gentrifying neighborhoods, networks of strong ties built upon years of shared place-based experiences by long-time residents have the potential to be more effective in organizing and achieving a position of power within communities for groups otherwise lacking in economic resources. Likewise, the strength of the gentry’s networks of weak ties may be overestimated in gentrifying neighborhoods when conflicts between newer and long-time residents erupt.

It is true that long-time Fishtown residents supported a state-mandated development project, and in doing so, aligned their community-based interests with powerful political and economic forces. And while the political and economic power might have been present to force the development of the casino, both long-time and newer residents believed that the active participation and support of long-time residents helped shape outcomes in Fishtown. From the perspective of newer residents and anti-casino activists, the division within the community was a weakness that the casino exploited. From the perspective of long-time residents, the provisions for jobs and money guaranteed by the Community Benefits Agreement would not have been obtainable without the efforts of long-time residents coming together and supporting the casino. From both viewpoints, the actions of long-time residents were considered crucial for determining the outcome of the casino conflict in Fishtown. This is especially significant considering the success of South Philadelphia and Chinatown residents to successfully organize against casino development.

As the case of Fishtown shows, strong community ties can be a powerful asset for long-time residents of gentrifying communities to exert influence in community decisions and demand a right to have a say. These findings should be useful to scholars, activists, policymakers, and community groups struggling against the seeming inevitability of economic and cultural transformations associated with gentrification. Considering the increasing global significance of gentrification, understanding the ways in which long-time residents can reestablish their place in their communities will be crucial in the years to come. If a community has a rich network of association bound by strong ties, it can use these bonds for building collective power that pushes back against the displacement and community dislocation that is the hallmark of gentrification.